KALA BIO to Launch On-Premise AI for Biotech

KALA BIO is partnering with the AI company Younet AI to develop and license a platform named "Researgency". This collaboration provides KALA with an exclusive worldwide license to the Researgency platform within the biotechnology sector for an initial 12-month term, with options to renew. The on-premise model directly addresses major data security concerns in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, where intellectual property like drug formulas and clinical trial data is a primary target for cybercriminals. By keeping all data within the client's own infrastructure, the platform is designed to prevent data breaches and intellectual property theft. This strategic pivot into AI infrastructure comes after a challenging period for KALA BIO, with its stock down nearly 95% over the past year. The company, which has a market capitalization of approximately $9.91 million, is repositioning itself to generate recurring revenue through a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model. Before offering the platform to other biotech and pharmaceutical companies, KALA BIO will act as its own first client. The company plans to apply the Researgency platform to its proprietary mesenchymal stem cell secretome (MSC-S) datasets and its KPI-012 clinical program for treating rare eye diseases. The move is framed as a direct challenge to centralized, cloud-based AI platforms. While cloud AI offers scalability, on-premise solutions provide greater control over sensitive data, a critical factor for highly regulated industries like biotech. KALA's CEO, Avi Minkowitz, stated, "We are building the opposite" of centralized AI, emphasizing that their model ensures a biotech company's data is never removed from its own servers. This initiative targets a significant market opportunity, as the top 20 pharmaceutical companies invested around $167 billion in research and development in 2024 but have only recently started to allocate significant budgets towards AI. The Researgency platform includes AI agents designed for specific biomedical research tasks, such as analyzing protein interactions and modeling clinical trial outcomes.